Peter Sedgwick
Internet Archive

1934 – 1983

Peter Sedgwick was born in 1934 and brought up in Liverpool. He gained a scholarship to Balliol College Oxford where he became a communist, leaving the Communist Party in 1956 with other members of the early New Left. He then joined the Socialist Review Group later to become the International Socialists. He wrote brilliantly for the group’s press, but also involved himself deeply in all the drudgery and activities of the rank rank-and and-file members. He was always a free spirit and was bitterly opposed to the International Socialism group renaming itself as a the Socialist Workers Party in 1976 refusing to join the new organisation while always remaining a man dedicated to the far left. He was editing the works of Victor Serge at the time of his death.

Works:

1954	America Over Britain
1955	Psychopolitics
1 January 1959	The Pretenders: An Answer to R. Emmett
Autumn 1959	NATO, the Bomb and Socialism
12 February 1960	Lidchester Leads the Way
Spring 1960	Towards an African socialism
July 1960	Labour’s Great Debate
November 1960	The Mind Of An Assassin (book review)
December 1960	Socialism, the Bomb and Neutralism
Winter 1960/61	The Fight for Workers’ Control
January 1961	Liquidating the Thirties (book review)
March 1961	Russia’s bomb (letter)
April 1961	Review (review)
May 1961	The Direction of Action
July 1961	Crime and Punishment
Autumn 1961	Stalinism without Stalin (review)
December 1961	Non-Violence – Dogma Or Tactic?
Winter 1961/62	The Last Time It Happened (review)
1962	The Reader’s Digest (short story)
Spring 1962	Reason in Revolt (review)
March 1962	Ghana, Guinea, Guiana: Three Strikes
August 1962	Sedgwick disagrees with Rex ... (review)
Autumn 1962	Historical Materialism (review)
Winter 1962	Caucasian Circles (review)
12 December 1962	Who Are the Troublemakers?
Winter 1962	States Of Emergency (review)
1963	Introduction to Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (review)
Spring 1963	The Left Reformist (review)
Autumn 1963	Defending Russia (review)
Autumn 1963	School Psychology (review)
Autumn 1963	Victor Serge and Socialism
Spring 1964	Original Marxism (review)
August 1964	The Two New Lefts
Autumn 1964	France Goes Pop (review)
Winter 1964/65	Colonial Sequelæ (review)
Winter 1964/65	International Nostalgia (review)
Winter 1964/65	Soviets Without Socialism (review)
Winter 1964/65	Whose Maturity? (review)
1 May 1965	Why May Day?
1 July 1965	Agents and Frameups
Autumn 1965	Life with Auntie (review)
Autumn 1965	Theory at the Hour of Wilson (review article)
1966	Natural Science and Human Theory
Autumn 1965	Too Involved (review)
15 February 1966	Nigerian workers
14 March 1966	Ghana – another saviour thrown on the scrapheap
Spring 1966	Centre for Socialist Education
7 April 1966	No noose is good noose (with Harry Goode)
Summer 1966	Doing Time (review)
Summer 1966	Pseud Left Review
5 August 1966	‘Victory for the Vietcong’ – Is it the right slogan?
Autumn 1966	Hash Rehashed (review)
Winter 1966/67	Behaviour and Action (review)
Spring 1967	Too Much, Too Soon (review)
Winter 1967/68	Thoughts in a Dry Season (review)
Winter 1967/68	Tragedy of the Tragedian: An appreciation of Isaac Deutscher
January 1968	Guevara: Right or Wrong?
Autumn 1968	Anarchy and Organisation (review)
9 November 1968	Orwell: honesty, courage and faith in the ‘proles’ (review)
Winter 1968/69	They’re talking about me (review)
1969	FOCUMENT
April 1969	The French May ... (review)
26 April 1969	Welfare work or revolutionary politics – the choice for the Left
8 May 1969	Be careful with nicknames (letter) (with Bob Looker)
15 May 1969	Inspiring – the early struggle for the revolution in Britain (review)
June 1969	George Orwell: International Socialist?
10 July 1969	The appalling silence and inactivity of the British Left as Biafrans face death and starvation ...
13 November 1969	Financiers untroubled by mines ‘takeover’
February 1970	The Polish Spring (review)
February 1970	The Problem of Fascism (review)
12 February 1970	Russell – the eagle (obituary)
April 1970	An Electoral Strategy for the Left (polemic)
May-June 1970	Discussion on factions
10 June 1970	Do we say ‘vote Labour’ until doomsday? (letter)
15 August 1970	Class, race and ‘intelligence’
1971	A Prologue: A Day in the Life of the ’Fifties
January 1972	The Crucial Year: Victor Serge on Class and Party
5 February 1972	Who’s Mad – You or the System? (review)
11 March 1972	Family Life: The critic replies to his critics (letter)
13 May 1972	A Note on Ireland
13 May 1972	A Prophet Revealed
11 November 1972	Endpiece [George Orwell + Radical Scholars] (review)
18 November 1972	Endpiece [Tenants + Old friends]
9 December 1972	Endpiece [Thomas Szasz + Language of Politics] (review)
23 December 1972	Endpiece: What chance for the big man’s widow? [+ Black Panthers] (review)
1972	Editor’s Introduction to Year One of the Russian Revolution
1972	The Allied Part in the Czechoslovak Intervention (Editorial Postscript to Year One of the Russian Revolution)
12 May 1973	Guevara’s other great love (review)
4 August 1973	Death of a Community (review)
February 1975	The return of Bukharin (extended review article)
1976	Farewell, Grosvenor Square
December 1976	The SWP Fraud
1978	Editor’s Note to the 1978 Impression of Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary
1980	A Return to First Things (review article)
1982	The Ethical Dance (review article)
1984	The Unhappy Elitist: Victor Serge’s Early Bolshevism
Date unknown	Letter from Afar

Peter Sedgwick Internet Archive

1934 – 1983

Peter Sedgwick
Internet Archive